Snow Art

Happy New Year 2020!

On this snowy January day, I thought it would fun to write about Simon Beck, known as the world’s first and most famous snow artist. When I discovered his amazing work a few years ago, I had to share it with my students. Snowflakes are always a popular winter subject in art class and I particularly love to use them to discuss radial symmetry, math and compass skills.

Simon, born in Britain, attended Oxford University for Engineering. Because of his love of maps and orienteering, he chose to become a cartographer. The story goes that one day after skiing, he was inspired to draw a star on the frozen lake in front of where he lived. The following day as he looked down on his creation from the ski lift, he was impressed with what he had made. And so began his Snow Art, a winning combination of his passion for the outdoors and his orienteering skills.

Simon’s Snow Art can cover an area of 2 to 8 soccer fields. These “drawings” take up to 12 hours to complete and require walking in snowshoes 20 to 30 kilometers. His artwork is seen all over the world and he has more than 270,000 fans on Facebook. He has also created Snow Art performances for world-renowned brands such as Corona. Most inspiring is Simon’s dedication to raise awareness for the environment through his beautiful creations.

Click on the links below to see more of Simon Beck’s groundbreaking, awe-inspiring Snow Art.

https://youtu.be/AqCZTfonTNw

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artist-travels-globe-create-massive-artworks-snow

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/01/simon-beck-snow-art/

All photos courtesy of Simon Beck

Evergreens

Many graphic designers I know and admire love nature as much as I do. It’s evident in their gardens, instagram posts as well as a major influence in their designs. A way to bring that nature inside is through floral arrangements. As in the culinary world, unfussy and natural arrangements are the trend. Hence, anyone can whip up a bouquet and make it look authentic and effortless! Or at least feel confident enough to try!

This time of year I like to walk my yard and cut as many different types of evergreens as I can. I use them to make arrangements for teacher gifts, hostess gifts and even just a thank you gift. Good evergreen choices are the following: boxwood, cedar, pine, juniper, cypress, holly, and arborvitae. Sometimes I choose one type such as white pine branches and place them in a tall clear vase. Other times I find interesting pottery and use floral oasis foam with water and create a more varied arrangement. The floral oasis foam can be inexpensively purchased at any local art and craft store. It provides a strong base for creating and secures the branches in the arrangement. Using branches with pinecones, berries or seed pods can add texture and height.

Evergreens in water also tend to last longer then other cut greenery. So in January it can add a bit of green in an otherwise bare room. With a candle lit, it’s a touch of Norwegian hygge!

PANTONE Color of the Year 2020

Every year the Pantone Institute selects their Color of the Year. Why does this matter? Well, the Pantone Institute advises companies on color for products and brand visual identity. For over twenty years, this choice has influenced multiple industries from fashion and graphic design to industrial and environmental design and every category in between. Pantone's newest Color of the Year is Classic Blue (19-4052), a hue that exemplifies timelessness and simplicity. 

PANTONE 19-4052 Classic Blue

Instilling calm, confidence, and connection, this enduring blue hue highlights our desire for a dependable and stable foundation on which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era.

So the marketplace is gearing up! Get ready to see Classic Blue roll out in products such as home decor rugs to your tween’s backpack. You may even notice it in subtle ways like your makeup packaging or a new bestseller book jacket. You can read more about the previous years’ colors and their selection process and trend analysis at Pantone’s website: here

Sketchbook Pages

As promised last week, here’s a peek at how the sketchbook challenge played out in my house! Below is the art my family and I created after being inspired by the author Danny Gregory’s book, Art Before Breakfast, A Zillion Ways to Be Creative No Matter How Busy You Are.

My husband Drew is a phenomenal artist and designer, but like most adults, has no time to indulge! Or so he thought…he created this tree drawing as he ate his lunch last week in the park.

My son John created this snowy landscape of a ski resort in a tiny tan paper sketchbook.

My daughter Claire loves to draw people and does practice quite a bit. If you are lucky, you might get a portrait of yourself on a birthday card!

And as for myself, tis the last week for pumpkins and I chose a messy charcoal pumpkin sketch.

It doesn’t matter the quality or how detailed the drawing is, just that you pick up the marker, pencil, charcoal, or crayon and just draw! Drawing and sketching are like using a muscle. The more you do it, the more you find your style that is distinctly you. It can be a part of your day where you stop, observe and try to capture a moment. You may also find your yourself more relaxed after drawing and ready to take on whatever the rest of the day holds!

For more information about Danny Gregory, visit his website https://www.dannygregory.com. There you will see his books, his drawing prompts to get started, and all his other creative arenas.

Art Before Breakfast

Participating in an online conference one year, I was introduced to the amazing work of Danny Gregory. He spent over 3 decades as a top NYC creative director and has written nearly a dozen internationally best-selling books on art and creativity. He is the co-founder of Sketchbook Skool with tens of thousands of students worldwide. His book, Art Before Breakfast, A Zillion Ways to Be Creative No Matter How Busy You Are changed my entire outlook on how I spend my free time. Also it re-ignited my desire to create fine art. As a graphic designer, it is so easy to quickly sketch ideas then head to the computer. The only drawing I did was to convey ideas for projects. Drawing is what I did in school before I went out into the world for a career in design. Then, days are so busy, and when you are not creating for clients, the last thing you think of doing is grabbing a graphite pencil and sketching for the pure fun of it! Not having enough time is such a convenient excuse. Well, Danny is here to dispel that myth! His novel idea that art with a “small a” can be done in as little as just a few minutes a day, and the subject can be ANYTHING. Just start drawing!

Visit his website to see his books, his drawing prompts to get started, and all his other creative arenas at https://www.dannygregory.com. Below I have displayed pages from Danny’s book. Check back next week when I post not only a page from my sketchbook, but from my family members’ sketchbooks who I have recruited for this!

Big Magic

As a designer, artist, educator, so many people would say to me on a daily basis,
“I could never draw that, I am not creative.” Or “How did you think of that? I am not that creative.”
I would always respond “Sure you could! I believe anyone can if they are curious and willing to try!” The statement that really stunned me was an administrator once telling me,
“I don’t think you can teach creativity.”
Yikes! Art and design educators would be out of a job if that were true! Another administrator had it right when she said,
“You always bring out the inner artist in everyone.”

I truly believe we are all creative. We just need the encouragement to try with no attention given to the idea of success or failure. The only job creating has is to come into existence. One of my favorite books is called Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by the author Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame. This book dispels the myth that creativity is a talent that some are born with and some are not. It really is magical when you relax, listen to what your heart wants to make and have the courage to just do it without thoughts of whether it is good or bad.

“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner–continuously and stubbornly bringing forth jewels that are hidden within you–is a fine art, in and of itself.” Elizabeth Gilbert

For further encouragement, check our her podcast “Magic Lessons.” It may be all you need to hear to get out there and create!

Massimo Vignelli

Massimo Vignelli was an Italian designer who created in the design arenas of packaging, housewares, furniture, environmental and graphics. He co-founded Vignelli Associates with his wife Lella in 1960. Some of his famous graphic design work was creating identities for Knoll and American Airlines. His design for the New York City subway signage in 1970 has become an iconic part of the metropolis as well as a stunning early example of information design. Vignelli, who studied and taught architecture, believed in the simplicity of the grid as the ultimate basis of graphic design. This guiding principle is most evident in his Stendig calendar of 1966, which the Museum of Modern Art purchased for its design collection.

I took the photo of the 2020 Stendig calendar below in a cool letterpress studio shop called Typehouse, located on Wentworth Street in Charleston, SC. Every December I look forward to finding the next year’s Stendig calendar for my studio. As I tear off each month, I can’t bear to throw away the cool, giant numbers in alternating black on white, white on black pages. Now what to create with all those calendar pages…

Infographics

"A good infographic is worth a thousand words."

Infographics are visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly. As a graphic designer I absolutely love to read them, collect them, and create them. It is a great way to break up a page from heavy text and a nice complement to other elements of a page such as photography. My daily source comes to my door in the form of the Wall Street Journal newspaper. Their infographics are so often in their editorial that they published a separate book highlighting the best. Another source is Randy Krum’s Cool Infographics blog that showcases examples of data visualizations and infographics found in magazines, newspapers and on the Internet. Below are from two books in my personal library.

Lena Corwin (artist, author, designer) illustrated cities in a book entitled Maps. It is such a fave of mine, I have framed pages of visited cities.

Ben Gibson and Patrick Mulligan of Pop Chart Lab have produced an in depth book entitled A Visual Guide to DRINK. They take everything from nerdy encyclopedic knowledge to pop culture and create stunning infographic posters for purchase on their website https://popchart.co .

Colossal

One of my favorite Bloglovin’ feeds is from the site This is Colossal. It curates the amazing work being created in the fields of art, design, photography, craft, illustration and more from around the globe. So many times I have wondered how did the artist even conceive that?! Descriptive articles and multiple links accompany the photos. The work is surprising and stunning at the same time and always inspires me to think bigger, well, to think colossal!

I chose the following embroidery artists to share:
Embroidery and calligraphy merge in Olga Kovalenko’s gestural stitched lettering.
Found vintage photos are re-interpreted with colorful overlays by Julie Cockburn.
Thread circles hover over vintage scenes embellished with embroidery by Natalie Ciccoricco.
Macro views of British beaches become abstract textural embroideries by Emily Botelho.

Catalog Cards

A friend of mine who works at a university asked me if I would like the library catalog cards that were being discarded. Of course I said yes, my mind went to multiple ideas! These typed cards are a tangible reminder of another time, another purpose. Some have cursive written notes, some are filled with detailed descriptions of the book and all are tabbed with Dewey decimal information. I envision a massive canvas of collaged words, but for now I am enjoying just illustrating the subject on the cards. The subjects are as diverse as “the business principles of emerging democracies,” to “the fashion of Paris in the 1920’s.”
I recently selected cards with food subjects to use as personal place cards for a dinner party. Guests had to guess what their food subject might be…lots of laughs!